Nothing to Hide — reading order
The books form one continuing story. Relationships and events carry forward between volumes, so the best starting point is Book One. Each volume advances the story rather than offering a separate, complete romantic resolution.
Book One: Touch Me Like You Mean It
Marissa Nordqvist knows what she likes—and she’s never been shy about getting it. At twenty, she has lovers who delight her, arrangements that suit her, and no intention of belonging to just one man.
Then there’s Isaac.
Her bookish dorm mate is attracted to her. She knows it. But he won’t accept the easy pleasure she offers, and the more time they spend together, the harder he becomes to dismiss.
Marissa has room in her life for desire. Needing someone is another matter.
Touch Me Like You Mean It is Book One of Nothing to Hide, a continuing, high-heat contemporary romance featuring a polyamorous heroine, explicit encounters, and a slow-burning central love story.
Book Two: Watch Me Want You
Marissa Nordqvist likes being wanted. She likes taking her time with a lover, discovering what excites him—and letting him discover just how much she enjoys it.
Summer in Los Angeles gives her plenty of opportunity. Familiar lovers know how to please her. A new attraction makes staying late at work dangerously tempting. Behind the doors of a private club, she finds fresh pleasures in being watched.
But the man she most wants to touch keeps making her wait.
Isaac is her friend, her favorite argument, and the person she keeps thinking about when she ought to be enjoying someone else. Every shared run, every lingering look, every inch of closeness makes wanting him harder to ignore. When they finally kiss, she wants more.
Marissa has never needed desire to come with exclusivity. Now she wants Isaac to understand the life she loves—and want a place in it.
Getting his attention is easy. Risking what he might see is another matter.
Watch Me Want You is Book Two of Nothing to Hide, a continuing erotic romance featuring a polyamorous heroine, explicit encounters with multiple partners, exhibitionism, and a slow-burning central love story. Begin with Touch Me Like You Mean It and read in order.
Book Three: Want Me As I Am
She knows how to be seen. He wants to know her.
Marissa Nordqvist knows how to enjoy being wanted. A lover's attention, a new touch, the pleasure of being seen—she has never needed desire to belong to only one person.
But Isaac's silence is something she cannot enjoy her way out of.
After hurting the friend who matters most to her, Marissa must do more than make him look. She must let him understand what he is looking at: the lovers she cares for, the freedom she protects, and the feelings she has kept out of every easy explanation.
Summer still has plenty to offer. A beach-volleyball teammate brings an attraction Marissa can no longer leave unnamed. Familiar lovers draw her into intimate rooms and nights of shared pleasure. Isaac draws her somewhere less familiar—with an unexpected kiss, a family dinner, and questions that follow her home.
He wants to know her. She wants him to want the woman she already is.
Neither can quite say what that will ask of them.
Want Me As I Am is Book Three of Nothing to Hide, a continuing erotic romance featuring a polyamorous heroine, bisexual discovery, explicit encounters with multiple partners, exhibitionism, and a slow-burning central love story. Begin with Touch Me Like You Mean It, followed by Watch Me Want You, and read in order.
Book Four: Let Me Need You
Wanting him was easy. Needing him changes everything.
Marissa Nordqvist has never had trouble finding someone who wants her. Isaac is the person she wants to call when everyone else has gone home.
Now she is beginning to understand what losing that place in his life would cost.
Summer in Los Angeles still offers plenty of pleasure. Familiar lovers welcome her into their beds. A chance encounter on the coast takes her somewhere unexpected. With Maja, desire keeps opening new possibilities—and Marissa has no intention of making those connections smaller to prove that Isaac matters.
But Isaac’s desire has never been the question. What comes after is harder.
He wants to understand what they mean to each other. She wants him in the ordinary hours: the shared runs, the late-night calls, the first untidy version of every story. She can tell him what she enjoys. Admitting what she needs leaves her far less certain of herself.
When a night goes wrong and an empty house needs company, caring for each other brings them closer than another attempt at seduction could. But even the truth cannot settle every difference between them. And amid the cameras and carefully sold intimacy of an adult-industry expo, Marissa discovers that some things are still difficult to tell the person who knows her best.
Let Me Need You is Book Four of Nothing to Hide, a continuing erotic romance featuring a polyamorous, bisexual heroine, explicit sexual encounters with multiple partners, and a slow-burning central love story. The relationship continues beyond this volume. Read in order: Touch Me Like You Mean It, Watch Me Want You, Want Me As I Am, then Let Me Need You.
Reader questions:
How explicit are the books?
They are high-heat erotic romance for adult readers, with detailed sexual encounters involving multiple partners. The erotic scenes have room to unfold, alongside the characters’ emotional lives and developing relationships.
Does slow burn mean I have to wait for the explicit scenes?
No. Explicit encounters are part of the story from the beginning. The slow burn is between Marissa and Isaac: their friendship, attraction and growing emotional closeness.
Does Marissa become monogamous when she falls in love?
No. Marissa is polyamorous, and loving Isaac does not change that. She wants him to understand the life she loves and find a place in it.
Other books by Vera Calder
The Presence Protocol
Available now on Amazon · Included with Kindle Unlimited · A standalone psychological novel
Cal Kendrick knows how to give pleasure. Staying close to someone afterward is another matter. When the distance between sex and intimacy begins to unravel his life, the professional tennis player enters surrogate partner therapy.
Marisa Nyberg has a life she likes: work that matters, lovers she enjoys, and the water near her Venice home. With clients, she knows what she can offer and where to stop. Cal is supposed to be another case. But she remembers a summer on Sandhamn that he has forgotten, and she takes his case without telling him or his therapist about their shared past.
As careful exercises become charged with desire, ordinary hours together begin to matter as much as what happens in the session room. Marisa’s sexual work with other adult clients and her relationships with other lovers continue while her feelings for Cal deepen. Falling in love makes those separate parts of her life harder to keep apart.
Between Los Angeles and the Swedish archipelago, Cal and Marisa must face what they want, what they have withheld, and what it costs to cross a boundary meant to protect someone. If they are to build a life together, desire will have to make room for the truth.
Explicit, quietly funny, and emotionally searching, The Presence Protocol is a psychological novel with a slow-burning central love story and a hopeful, committed ending.
This novel contains explicit adult sexual content, including surrogate partner sessions and consensual sex with other partners during the developing central love story, before the couple agree to exclusivity. It depicts professional/client boundary violations, including an unwanted kiss, and includes references to a family member’s suicide, bereavement, and grief.
A separate novel, outside the Nothing to Hide series.
Buy on Amazon or read with Kindle Unlimited